


The I in Henry

by lonelywalker



Category: The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach
Genre: Baseball, Canonical Character Death, Eating Disorders, Future Fic, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Yuletide 2012, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry's got one more year at his beloved Westish - to whip the Harpooners into shape, catch the eye of the MLB scouts, and battle his inner demons - but he can't stay there forever.</p><p>Spoilers for the whole book from the start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The I in Henry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kristin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristin/gifts).



> _213\. Death is the sanction of all that the athlete does._

Henry didn't go to the funeral. 

"It was nice," Mike, a man who never said 'nice', said over the phone, a tenuous, crackling connection to Henry's parents' home in South Dakota, the sort of thing that should have been obsolete by 1950.

"He would've hated it," Owen said, which was not a very Owen sort of thing to say either, Henry thought. "But there's more of him left in the library. _The Sperm-Squeezers_. Did you ever read it? I want to buy a hundred more copies and slide them in between Civil War tomes and poetry chapbooks and physics texts... I want a thousand more people to find him the way I found him. The way he found Melville."

Henry, who had no idea what Owen was talking about, said various things in reply, all of which sounded pretty much like "hm" and “oh”.

Pella didn't call, but that was understandable in more than one way.

Henry ate and showered and went for walks and bussed carts at the Piggly Wiggly and showered again and ate again, and that was the summer.

***

By September, following another, less traditional funeral, Owen was in Tokyo and Henry was back at a Westish that seemed to have changed less than he had imagined it might. The colors were a shade more autumnal, the faces different, and the new president had peach-toned sleeves that ruffled. Henry sat with Pella and Mike on the steps of Birk Hall and ate hotdogs while they tried to be as judgmental as they possibly could of the new freshpersons.

"Of course I technically _am_ a freshperson," Pella said.

"We're being judgmental of you too, don't you worry." Mike, more than technically now a member of staff, was still wearing much the same as he always had, even if the sports-free summer had left him with less of an ever-present grimace. 

Henry noisily sucked up the last of his Sprite through a cracked straw. On his first year here, Owen had made all sorts of pained noises about slaughterhouses and corporate sponsorship before darting off to make pained noises to more attractive, sympathetic people. He imagined Owen doing much the same thing to a baffled set of students in Tokyo too, before casually beating them into submission with his ping-pong skills and inquiring where one might procure good quality pot on a student budget.

The question of "will Owen be okay?" never really seemed urgent enough to voice. Henry didn't have to imagine Owen bruised and battered, or crying over his dead lover's body. He had seen both those things with his own eyes. But the idea of Owen not being okay, not perfectly inserting himself into student life and sports and dating and eventually an entire world beyond college… Henry couldn't imagine the world ever daring to raise an objection to what was an inevitable rise to academic, cultural, and maybe even political stardom. The Dunne 2028 campaign was already running TV spots in his brain.

And, even if Mike wasn't at Harvard and Pella had lost her only family in the world... "Okay" didn't seem to be too far off for them either. They had each other. They had their own place. They had Henry, if they wanted him.

 _Will Henry be okay?_ he asked himself as Mike jogged around the stalls to pick up yet more snacks. Henry had a private room this year, nominally still shared with an absent Owen, which was mostly stocked with Owen's artwork and Owen's books and a set of strict instructions on how to water Owen's herbs and Owen’s cacti until Owen made it back for commencement next June.

The '69 register was gone from the fireplace, neatly tucked back into its slot in the president's office before Mike and Pella moved out. Henry wondered if anyone would ever open it again and ponder the neatly-cut missing rectangular image, which was now nicely framed on the wall above Owen's neatly-made, never-slept-in bed. A tall young man wheeling a bicycle, his hair long, his shirt sleeves perfectly crisp, rolled midway up muscular forearms. President Affenlight, about the age Henry was now: young, healthy and beautiful in the way all young, healthy people are beautiful.

Henry would sit and stare at it when he tired of staring at the screensaver on Owen’s computer, or at the ceiling, which was still reasonably neutral territory. Dust was building up. Grime was caking the grout in the bathroom. The dormitory apocalypse had begun.

“We don’t know,” said one of the Asian Steves across the hall when Henry inquired about how he might go about keeping the room free from pestilence, or at least horrified looks from visitors. “Try Febreze?”

Henry carefully rolled up Owen’s once-immaculate, now quite forlorn rug, with its memories of spilled milk, dollops of soup, and at least one mouthful of scotch. He stared at the floor. He stared at the holes in the bookcase around _The Art of Fielding_ and his physics books, and the few textbooks Owen had left him in case he wanted to study Pinter for a semester or delve into the guts of the French Revolution.

Every morning, Pella woke him up with breakfast and sat and watched him eat. Every evening, Mike escorted him to the dining hall and sat and watched him eat. 

It was football season. Zero sat on the shelf. Henry jogged by the lake as minutes of his final year at Westish ticked by. 

_You can’t stay here forever._

Maybe I’ll just never leave, he thought. I’ll get a job here. I’ll move in with Mike and Pella. I’ll sink to the bottom of the lake and never have to breathe or think or throw again.

“You know my dad was a jock,” Pella said one morning while Henry gulped down a glass of milk and poked at the remaining Froot Loops among yet more milk. “He came here to play football. But I don’t think I ever even saw him touch a ball.”

People said things like this around Henry now. They drifted into philosophy and stories with blunt, obvious morals. 

“One day he just stumbled into an entirely different life. If he’d never found those papers, I’d never have been born.”

Henry considered what might be an appropriate thing to say. “I’m glad you were born,” he ventured.

Pella scooped up his bowl and went to wash up. “Yeah.”

Henry and the boy on the wall exchanged a glance. “Do you think he was happy?”

“What?”

“Your dad. President Affenlight. Do you think he was happy?”

He could see her shoulders sigh. “He loved this place. He loved his books. He loved me and Owen and probably even the stupid baseball team. Better than constantly throwing a ball no one was ever good enough to catch, right?”

He should have been caught up on the casual slight to the Harpooners, but… “No one was ever good enough?”

Pella turned off the faucet and turned back round, wiping her hands. “My dad liked stories. He only ever had one about playing football for the Sugar Maples. They had a stupid name and a stupid uniform, and only two good players. One could throw and one could run but no one in that whole damn team could catch the fucking ball.”

“Maybe he just wasn’t very good at throwing,” Henry suggested.

If Pella were Professor Eglantine, she would no doubt hesitate and then nod, adjusting her glasses while she said: “That’s a fascinating perspective, Mr. Skrimshander.”

Pella just grabbed up his glass and wrinkled her nose. “We need more milk,” she said.

He had been the last person to see President Affenlight alive, they’d insisted. Henry barely remembered what had happened at all beyond tears and exhaustion and choking on Rice Krispies. But President Affenlight had been there – the plane ticket and the car had proved it – and some minutes or hours later he’d died.

It should’ve been Pella. Should’ve been Owen. They would have known what to do, how to act, what to say, if not to save him then at least to make it mean something, at least to _remember_.

“I think he saved my life,” Henry had said to Owen over Skype one night. 

Owen had smiled sleepily, pixilated through the college’s poor wi-fi. “I know. Me too.”

Days passed. Henry pulled _The Sperm-Squeezers_ out from the bookshelf, frowned at the boy on the wall, and gave up after about half a chapter of what he firmly believed were literary references and in-jokes so far over his head they might as well be clouds. Fourteen-year-old Owen must have fallen in love instantly.

He didn’t need to pull _The Art of Fielding_ out to read it. The words were always there, in front of his eyes, on his lips, brushing his fingertips…

_You can’t stay here forever._

Footsteps skittered up the stairs: not Owen, not Mike or Pella, neither of the Steves. Henry contemplated the thought of President Affenlight soaked and bony, dredged up from the mud, come to patiently explain that a mistake had been made, that it was Henry who deserved to be buried and drowned, Henry whose heart had nothing left to give…

Henry was no expert in these things, but the knock was a little light for a zombie.

“Yo, Henry? You awake, vendejo? Let’s go!”

***

Izzy clattered down on Owen’s bed, wrinkling the sheets, while Henry pulled out sweatpants and a t-shirt and got dressed. It was still deep in football season, but Izzy was bored and riding a high of enthusiasm from the championship win that, for him, had never been tainted by death or hospitals or a brief stint as a graverobber. 

“This is _nice_ ,” Izzy said, looking around, hand thumping his glove. “It’s like, what, twice the size of my dorm… How the fuck you score this, Skrimmer?”

Henry explained about Owen’s scholarship, but Izzy didn’t seem very interested in the answer, was already looking at and sniffing Owen’s collection of potted herbs by the window.

“What d’you think of the fresh meat? Schwartzy says there might be a few prospects… One of us is already gonna be riding the bench. Maybe I'll play second base again. You could be DH? Anyway, thought I’d wear out your wing before the season’s even started.”

“My wing’s fine.” It was a lot easier to ask about than his mental state.

“Yeah, we’ll see. See Starblind in the minors? Naw, he’ll be in traction till next summer. You should’ve seen him pitch. Rick’s tending bar. Who’s that?”

He didn’t have to look up to know. “Owen’s boyfriend.”

“Sorry I asked. Race you to the bleachers?”

Henry finished tying his laces. “It isn’t even the season yet. How about we just walk?”

In Owen’s absence there was never any music on in Henry’s dorm room. All he heard were the bells of the chapel, footsteps on the stairs, and the occasional song blared out from the open window of another dorm: one student’s demand that they all listen in unison, bearing witness to the emotion of it all, at least until a professor or someone trying to study burst in and shut off the radio. 

Izzy’s iPod headphones dangled down from the collar of his shirt as he scuffed his shoes on the turf, crouched down, stretched. The silence of the field, the emptiness of the bleachers, was almost profound. 

Henry jumped up, knees almost to his shoulders, crouched down too, looking around to try and remember the last perfect game, when night was closing in and the bleachers were almost full and rumor had it the scouts were looking at him. He tried to remember the wind, its touch on his face under his cap, the flavor of it on his lips. He tried not to think at all.

The last time he’d practiced, he and Mike had used shovels for bases. Each clang had been a declaration of victory against the silent morning. Now there was music in it, Izzy’s footwork, the swing of the bat, the ball soaring, smacking into his glove, the thud and echo of the ball in the bucket. First base. Third base. Second. Thud. Thud. Thuddd.

It was easy to put on weight over the summer. Almost anyone could put on weight with enough to eat and little enough to do. But it was muscle Henry needed – no, not muscle but strength. The ability to smack out home runs would be nice, but he needed to be able to play a whole game without feeling like his skeleton was crumbling from the inside. He’d told Mike he would be captain, he would marshal the troops and have them running the bleachers every morning, bench pressing every afternoon, getting bulk orders of SuperBoost 9000 so they ate, drank, puked, and bled protein. 

The most obvious problem was the lack of a team. Starblind was in the minors, Owen in Tokyo, Rick never the most inspirational or dedicated player to begin with. The seniors from last year had graduated, and this year’s were largely gone too. There was just Henry… and Izzy, and a lot of kids who had either never been on the team or had barely played.

“We’re not going to win this year,” Henry said as they carried the buckets back inside.

“What’s with that kind of talk? We won _everything_ last year.”

“With Mike and Starblind.” And Owen, who had proved to be a surprisingly reliable hitter in crucial games. Crucial games Henry hadn’t even seen. 

“ _We_ isn’t people, Skrimmer. It’s the team.” 

Henry gazed into his locker. “The team is people. What are we? Navy and tan?”

“Ecru, man.”

“The Harpooners always lost before. It was just one good year. We have to focus on building up the team again. For the long term.”

Izzy grinned. “You’re thinking like Mike. That’s Mike’s job. You’re a senior, Henry. It’s your last shot. You think you’re gonna get drafted thinking for the _long term_? Let’s go win the championship again. I really liked that champagne, man!”

They ran the bleachers. A quarter of the way round at that pace, it really started to not feel good. Halfway, he wanted to stop. At the three quarter mark, he wanted to puke. As he jogged home, a good way behind Izzy, he did.

Izzy clapped him on the back as he spat up half-digested cereal and chowder: not reassuring little pats, but big hearty slaps. “O _kay_!”

“So how do we get the team together?” Henry asked, rinsing out his mouth with water ten times over.

“Text message? E-mail? It’s not like it’s the nineties.”

Henry wondered if, in President Affenlight’s day, someone had just stood in the quad and yelled until enough people got the message. In the VAC, he sat in Mike’s new office (which, of course, was someone else’s old office – and looked it) and leafed through the contact information for the previous year: names, rooms, phone numbers, allergies, next of kin. 

The e-mail circular he typed up seemed overly polite and vague at first. The rewrite relied far too heavily on capital letters and exclamation marks. Henry found some minty chewing gum in the desk drawer and popped in a couple of sticks, hoping that Mike might actually appear. But the VAC was silent except for Izzy trying to grind out a few more deadlifts without busting a gut. 

In the end, the e-mail was condensed down to:

**BASEBALL – MEET @ BLEACHERS, 6AM MONDAY - SKRIMMER**

He sent it to everyone who had been on the team last year and was still at the college. Then he printed out a few copies, pinned it up in the VAC, at the student union, next to Café Oo. Back in his room, he poked around on Google, sure that Owen would have had a dozen ideas about social networking and flash mobs, or at least something certain to encourage some freshperson boys to show up. He needed bodies more than experience or talent. Mainly he needed not to be standing around alone at sunrise.

On Monday, he woke at five, gulped down milk, grabbed Zero, and sprinted downstairs. Old times. Good times.

“Well,” Mike said. “Good turnout.”

Henry was jogging up and down the stairs with memories of much colder mornings in his mind, the kind of days when his breath would freeze in the air, his nose and ears numb by the end of the first section. 

“You’re not even supposed to be here.”

Mike shrugged, leaning against the wall. “Pella’s working in the dining hall. She wakes me up every time she leaves.”

Henry turned and ran back down, all the way to the turf. His heart was thumping in a way he didn’t like, his breath catching. Not long ago he’d been able to outrun Adam Starblind, out-bat almost anyone. Now he wasn’t positive he could outrun or out-bat Pella. Not that Pella was the most pitiful physical specimen he could think of. She had a very nice… everything. But the pang of jealousy and bitterness he thought he should be feeling about Mike and Pella, and about Mike and Pella sleeping and living and breathing together, just wasn’t there. Or perhaps it was there, but he couldn’t quite feel it through the air burning in his lungs.

“Schwartzy!” Izzy’s head popped out of the stairwell. He looked at Henry, looked both ways, then back down the stairs. “Is this it?”

Maybe six had been overly optimistic. He should’ve said ten. And a meeting in the café or student union rather than out here. He needed bodies, not…

There were footsteps on the stairs. A towering blond kid in a hoodie, and then two darker boys Henry had seen in the physics labs. All three of them looked around too, like they’d rehearsed coordinated moves. “Is this it?” one of the physics guys said, in an accent that Henry usually associated more with cricket than baseball. (Was that racist? He’d have to e-mail Owen.)

“Time is a fluid concept,” Mike said.

Henry was mainly focusing on not puking in front of the new recruits. The milk had been a bad idea.

Two minutes later and a crowd – or what was comparatively a crowd – of last year’s freshperson and sophomore benchwarmers showed up, led by Loondorf and Willoughby, neither of whom had ever led much of anything before but were now in full possession of a mob.

“Right,” Henry said. “Hope everyone had a nice summer. We’re running stadiums. Try not to puke on the seats.” And, without looking at Mike, he took off down the bleachers toward the turf, his feet slapping onto the plastic, hoping and praying that they’d follow him. Him, Skrimmer, who had almost been drafted, who had won the Harpooners the championship for the first time in their history, who had almost starved himself to death, who had deserted his team by walking off the field.

Izzy appeared, bobbing at his elbow. “What kinda pace d’you call this?”

Behind them, footfalls were almost outstripping chatter. Henry began the run up the next set of bleachers, risking a glance behind. No one was going to be doing end-runs around the goal line, but they were following.

“It’s only the first day,” Henry said. “Give it some time.”

It took two more seconds before Loondorf started bellowing out the Westish fight song.

***

The Harpooners made it to Regionals the following season, where teamwork, resilience, and Henry’s flawless performance at shortstop earned them a noble, yet crushing defeat. The freshpersons were enthused, Izzy was philosophical, and Rick passed beer out in the locker room. 

Mike clapped a hand on Henry’s shoulder as they stood out at home plate, watching the crowd slowly dissipate. “You did all you could. More. We’re going to have some freshperson talent coming through next year and Izzy’ll make a good captain, a great shortstop. The future’s looking pretty rosy.”

“I won’t see it, though.” The win last year had been something he felt he hadn’t earned, which meant there was some sort of justice in the way he’d been unconscious for most of it. This year he’d played every game, racking up the tiredness and the injuries and the Westish gung-ho never-say-die spirit along with everyone else. Maybe the scouts cared more about him than the team, but it wasn’t his job to worry about the scouts.

“You’ll see plenty more championships,” Mike said. “And at least everyone gets a bit more study time for finals. Just in case you’re planning to be an astrophysicist rather than a baller.”

Henry tossed the ball from hand to hand. “Good to have something to fall back on.”

From that final game until commencement, Henry still called out the team, leading them through PT and practice. There was going to be a summer tournament in Florida again, and although he wouldn’t be there, he would be watching somehow even if it meant getting Mike to e-mail him write-ups. Once a Harpooner, always a Harpooner.

After his final exam, he strolled across the Small Quad, bathed in sunlight, and started up the stairs of Phumber. Everything that had been terrifyingly new four years ago, and had then resolved itself into a banal shade of normal, now seemed brighter and more poignant than ever. There was a draft notice on his desk, waiting to be signed: the Cardinals had picked him up again, and he couldn’t possibly say no twice. But still, signing it seemed like he was breaking up with too many people, deserting too many beloved things. He felt like he wanted to hug and cry over Chef Spirodocus, let alone Mike.

His key didn’t turn in the lock, so he turned the handle, surprised to find that the door was unlocked. He poked his head in first, checking for zombie presidents. What he found was a tall young man in a Harpooners cap and martial arts pants, his skin the color of weak coffee.

“Owen!”

“Henry!”

They’d never been affectionate before, beyond the sort of ecstatic affection any player showed for his teammates, which often went above and beyond what they’d show their girlfriends. But Henry hugged him as though they hadn’t seen each other since August, which they hadn’t, and to make up for all the hugs he hadn’t given him then.

“Some of my plants seem to be browner than they were,” Owen said in a manner Henry judged to be not particularly accusatory.

Henry slipped his hands into his pockets. “Have you seen Mike yet?”

“No, I just got off the bus.” Owen indicated the bag on the bed and the suitcase propped up by his bare desk. “I flew directly here. Most of my things are being shipped to my mother’s house, however.”

“Oh.”

“It seems that I may be teaching the playwriting course again this summer, with perhaps a slightly Asiatic bent to the curriculum. Will you be going home? The drama department has offered me a room in a shared apartment they keep for their minions – excuse me, adjuncts – but I thought if you were planning to be here this summer…”

“I was,” Henry, who had only thought about it that instant, nodded with enthusiasm and what he hoped was decisiveness. “I mean… can I?” Home suddenly seemed very, very small compared to Westish, which in itself seemed tiny in the context of the letter sitting on Henry’s desk, propped up and prominent among study notes.

Owen, of course, plucked up the letter immediately. “I don’t see why not. Is this your draft letter?” He adjusted his glasses as he unfolded it. “Oh my. Those are quite a few zeroes.” He looked up and grinned. “And for all that standing around, too. I should have practiced more and studied less.”

“Too much standing around. A lot of people never make it out of the Minors, and with injuries and everything…” Henry rubbed his elbow just as Owen clapped him on the shoulder.

“You need to sign it.”

“I know.”

Owen seemed to have grown a little taller, or maybe a little broader, in a year. In any case, he seemed more of an adult than Henry could hope to be. Then again, Pella and Mike were both two years older, and Owen was his elder by a couple of months… Maybe those couple of months made all the difference. Maybe wisdom and authority descended on you in your sleep.

“They won’t throw you off campus the moment you sign it, you know.”

“I know.”

Owen smiled again, and turned back to his bag with a glance toward the framed portrait on the wall. “In any case, I come bearing gifts for my fine and hard-toiling friends.” An immaculately wrapped package was tossed Henry’s way. “How have you and Guert been getting along?”

“He’s not much of a conversationalist.” Henry picked at the edges of sticky tape. “You know we had the naming ceremony. It’s Affenlight Field now.”

“Pella said… How very strange, really, but I fully trust that we’ll have Skrimshander Library and the Dunne Chemistry Lab before long. It’s quite all right, Henry, you don’t need to preserve the paper for posterity.”

Henry still felt a little guilted by the tearing sounds before a white baseball jersey with navy and gold flashes unfolded between his hands. “Buffaloes?” he read, upside down.

“A Nippon Professional Baseball team,” Owen explained. “As close as I could find to our colors. Ecru seems to be a hard sell in the world of sports apparel, and despite the Japanese nation’s barbaric whaling traditions, no Harpooners in the league I’m afraid.”

“It’s great!” Henry tugged it on immediately. Flexed. Lunged into another hug.

Owen patted his back softly and then simply held on.

The four of them had dinner at Maison Robert that night, all four decked out in whatever they considered to be their formalwear – a dapper suit for Owen, a nice lilac dress for Pella, slacks and a sports jacket for Mike, and a slightly rumpled shirt paired with a Harpooners tie for Henry (Owen made noises about inexplicably having further store gift cards he just had to use over the weekend in Door County).

“Dinner’s on my dad,” Pella said. “Or, at least, whoever’s buying print-on-demand copies of _The Sperm-Squeezers_ from Amazon. I think he might like the idea of the four of us getting together for dinner now and again.”

She looked meaningfully at Henry, who hastily swallowed the forkful of ratatouille he’d been aimlessly twirling for the past few minutes. 

“What are you going to do after the summer, Owen?” he asked.

Owen took a sip of wine. “My mother insists I come and see her for a change, but then I have an internship with a literary magazine in New York. Very smart, angry people. You’d like them, Pella. I’ll sign you up for their mailing list. I may start applying to grad programs for the following year… I haven’t quite decided. Modern arts education is such a vacuum for both money and original thought.”

“Well, whatever you do, keep in touch.”

“Of course. We all need to go and see Henry play.”

Henry looked around at the three of them: such good friends, such high expectations. “It’s only the Minors,” he said. “I could be on the bench all season. You should watch the Harpooners instead. Izzy’s going to be a helluva good captain.”

“Kid’s got heart,” Mike agreed. He was sounding more and more like Coach Cox every day. “But even the Minors is a pretty huge step up from Division III.”

“Yeah, like I said. The bench.”

“Starblind’s been playing. I’m not saying the whole league’s going to be in awe of your brilliance, Skrim, but even on your worst day you’re too good for benchwarming. Hell, the Buddha here’s too good for benchwarming, as long as you want to take someone’s eye out.”

Owen held up his hands to calm imaginary applause.

“My worst day?” A few came to mind – the day he’d been convinced he’d killed Owen, the day he’d deserted his team and walked off the field, the day he’d won a championship by – his therapist had suggested – trying to lay down his life for the team. 

Mike sighed. “This last season, I mean. Physically you’re right there. Mentally you’ve been keeping it together, and the whole team too. Most of those kids were shitting themselves playing college ball for the first time. Remember what you were like the first year?”

“The Cardinals won’t have Mike Schwartz chasing me round the bleachers,” 

“You don’t _need_ Mike Schwartz chasing you round bleachers,” Mike said with patience that belied his age. “The pro teams have people who’ll do that, by the way. You’re not just a player anymore, Skrim. You’re an investment. A serious moneymaking opportunity. They’ll do absolutely everything they can to make you into a star – not just winning games, but the merchandising. Playing ball isn’t just about playing ball anymore. Half the time I hear about A-Rod, it’s got nothing to do with baseball.”

Henry scratched his fork against his plate. “I’m not sure I can play well _and_ do the other stuff.” He glanced at Owen. “Maybe the Buddha can be my manager and do all the interviews for me.”

“You can do anything. You got your degree, didn’t you? You held down a job in the kitchens.”

“Anyone can hold down a job in the kitchens,” Henry said. “And I did all my physics labs in the off-season.”

Mike nodded as if that were the perfect demonstration of his argument. “So just imagine what you’ll be able to do when all you need to worry about is your game.”

Henry thought, briefly, about the din of the dining hall on a normal weekday around dinner time – the crockery stacking up, the shouts becoming more urgent, Chef Spirodocus’ insistent requirements for cleanliness and order increasing by the minute… It was easy to work well like that, to keep moving, limbs flowing, every breath precise and measured, no energy wasted. But close to Christmas, when every student who could had flown or driven off to families near or far, when the quad was crisp with frost and the dining hall, though decorated with cheery tinsel, was almost deserted, he’d washed less in an hour than he normally did in ten minutes. The movements were clanky, unoiled. His mind wandered. He hated every second of it, the drafts blowing around his ankles.

Baseball had always been his safe place away from the world. He wasn’t sure how safe he would feel now that it _was_ the world.

***

“Right,” Henry said.

If there were such a thing as a baseball tornado, Henry was reasonably sure that he had not only been caught out by one, but had been sucked right out through the window of his life at Westish, slammed around, and deposited in a heap somewhere rather warmer and more southern. 

The initial orientation pack he’d been sent by the Cardinals had been very reassuring in its thickness. The pack from Westish had been something similar – long and wordy, yet with the sense that all the answers were in there, that everything was scheduled, and people somewhere knew what they were doing. The Westish reality had indeed been that way. Even when Henry had known no one but Owen and failed miserably to integrate himself with Westish social life, he’d still made it to classes on time and eaten and slept and been in no real danger of slipping out of existence entirely. Life in the Minors seemed infinitely more perilous.

None of the other players looked in the least bit familiar, except that they all looked the same – white, Hispanic, African-American, Asian… They were a whirlwind of names Henry couldn’t keep straight, and no matter their height or skin color, they all had the same grimly focused look, the same strong jaw and over-developed biceps. No one tried to read on the bench or practiced arias between innings or was on the team solely to meet the elusive girls who mostly weren’t in the chemistry department. There was quite a lot of frantic father-son-holy-spirit crossing before games, but no one flashed a smile worthy of Izzy Avila in Henry’s direction.

Here, Henry was either worthless or he was competition, and neither was going to win him any friends.

“We’re supposed to be a team,” he said to Mike over the phone. “Everyone’s jostling for position. I don’t know how we’re going to win anything. We’ll be too busy throwing the ball at each other’s heads.”

Mike chuckled. “At Westish we had a clear pecking order. You knew you’d be starting shortstop as soon as Lev graduated, if not sooner. In the Minors you might make it in a few weeks or never. Everyone’s scared they’re going to be the never ones.”

“ _I’m_ scared I’m going to be the never one.” If he wasn’t the shortest person on the team, he came close, and no one was going to beat up Hernandez or Flintish or whoever the other guy was on his behalf. And his Little League tactic of just dumbly standing around at shortstop no matter what the coach said just didn’t seem to be an option. Four years of hard toil at Westish, including one summer of mental rehabilitation, seemed to have deposited him firmly back at square one.

The next morning he woke at five in the apartment the team had arranged for him, mixed up his protein shakes in a kitchen that seemed absurdly spacious compared to Owen’s mini-fridge, and set off for the training ground. The locker room was empty. When he changed into his uniform, picked up Zero, and said “Right” to himself in what was only really a confident whisper, the noise echoed off the walls. If his eyes had been closed he might have been able to convince himself that the whole team was repeating the word, agreeing with him.

Maybe his therapist had been wrong. Maybe delusions did have their place.

The sound of the door opening when it was still only almost seven and not even full light outside made Henry grab his bat and prepare to beat potential burglars and murderers about the head… despite the fact no one could even get into the building without proper ID. The training ground wasn’t exactly the Westish VAC. 

“Oh, hi.” The newcomer was one of the outfielders – Rodriguez or Fernandez or something – tall and lanky, baseball cap low over his eyes, a silver crucifix clanking against his sternum. “Been here long?”

“Not long,” Henry said, a little warily.

The man pushed up his cap and blinked a little in the fluorescent light. “You think maybe we could do some practice? I was just gonna run laps, but seeing as you’re here and all… Hey, I never really got your name?”

Henry swapped the bat to his left hand, held out the right. “Henry Skrimshander.”

“Shit. That Norwegian or something?” The handshake was firm, but not bone-breaking firm.

“Something,” Henry agreed. “Um, you’re…?”

“Jaime Ismael.” Jaime dug around in his jeans pocket. “Gum?”

“Sure… Ishmael like ‘Call me Ishmael’?”

“Something like that.”

The two of them chewed in minty solidarity for a moment. 

“So…” Henry pointed the bat toward the door. “Batting cages?”

“Sure, why not… If I get a concussion maybe coach will remember I exist.”

“Happened to my roommate in college…” Jaime didn’t seem much like Owen, but then no one Henry had ever met seemed very much like Owen. “Have you read _The Art of Fielding_?”

Jaime opened his locker with a clang. “What’s _The Art of Fielding_?”

The practices seemed to go a little better after that. Even if most of the players barely admitted to his existence, Henry could find much to study and admire in their abilities – a ball well hit, a run well judged, a seemingly impossible ball caught with a minimum of effort. Here there was no one worrying about a paper they had to finish by the next morning, or with half a mind on the math problem that had been troubling them all weekend. It took Henry two weeks for it to occur to him that these were all _professional baseball players_ , men being paid to be the best in the world at this game, and that he, almost inexplicably, was one of them.

“You don’t need to be perfect,” Mike said on the phone. “You don’t even need to be the greatest shortstop who ever lived. You just need to be the greatest shortstop on your team. Hell, I’d settle for the greatest shortstop on the _field_.”

In the winter, thanks to the other contenders’ sniffly noses and sprained ankles, Henry started as shortstop for a practice tournament. The temperatures were low, the wind unpredictable, Jaime huffing hot breaths into his hands as he jogged out to center field. Henry took up his position: stretching, jumping, crouching, anything to get some blood flowing and some heat into stiff limbs. 

The batting of their opponents was impressively hard and impressively consistent, but Henry stood firm, and with him the other fielders, even if none of them had ever read _The Art of Fielding_. There was too much compensating to do with the wind and the cold and the enhanced abilities of the competition for him to do very much thinking or doubting. Every ball he caught was a relief, every ball he threw to the glove of the first baseman a miracle.

In the next game, the conditions were better, the weather cool but not frigid, the sun warming the grass. Henry crouched down and tugged his cap a little lower. Maybe if he played blindfolded he’d have fewer concerns. Part of him actually wanted to try it, but his ability to predict Amherst’s pitches had almost gotten him killed. Best to keep his eyes open. One of his throws sailed two feet above the first baseman’s outstretched glove. Sloppy, sloppy, unforgivable.

At the top of the fourth, it came to him as though Pella was sitting in the dugout right by his side: _No one in that whole damn team could catch the fucking ball_. And then, Aparicio by his other shoulder: _Thoughtless being is attained by everyone, the return to thoughtless being by a very few_.

Did it really matter if anyone caught the ball? 

The thought brought him up short, as he looked blankly out to where one of his teammates was stomping joyously on home base. If he played well, if he scooped up the ball and let it fly… what did it matter if someone caught it? Or if no one caught it? If they won, or lost?

It niggled at him that of _course_ it mattered. This was a team game and, in fact, much more than a game now: his profession. He had to account for the abilities and flaws of the other fielders, the speed and daring of their opponents. Every single movement he made mattered. It sent out ripples throughout the game. _The shortstop is a source of stillness at the center of the defense. He projects this stillness and his teammates respond._

But he was still thinking about it when he returned to shortstop. How many errors, Henry?

Zero! Zero! Zero!

The night after the tournament, Henry lifted the phone in his apartment to call Mike with his usual game report, hesitated, and dialed the number for Owen instead. Owen was in New York, an hour ahead, and he answered amid the clinking of glasses and faint, sophisticated music that always belonged to the world Henry assumed Owen inhabited.

“Henry! How are you?”

It seemed like an odd request, even more so speaking it out loud – and then repeating it, because Owen could barely hear him over dinner conversation – but Owen said “Of course” immediately.

In the morning, there was a scanned photo of a young man with a bicycle waiting in Henry’s Gmail. Henry printed it out and took a thick black marker to the white band at the bottom of the paper. He stuck it up on his fridge and stood back.

 **YOU CAN’T STAY HERE FOREVER** , he’d written.

Henry picked up Zero and went to work.

***

A little over a year later, Henry returned to Wisconsin with the Cardinals to face off against the Brewers. Despite being a Westish boy who had made it to MLB, the show, the big time, he felt a little guilty to be coming back into Milwaukee dressed in the enemy’s colors. Then again, none of the people who gathered around him at the stadium were actually from Wisconsin either: his parents and Sophie, Mike and Pella, Izzy and some of the older Harpooners… Owen had brought his very intense Senegalese boyfriend, Julien, who spoke French, dressed in Armani, and seemed to care absolutely nothing for baseball. Henry took a liking to him immediately.

“No pressure,” Mike said, laying a big paw of a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “I know this is almost your home crowd, but out there on the field it’s just the same group of guys. Just you and them. And really the only part that matters is you and your game.”

Owen shook his hand with a smile. _You are skilled, I exhort you._ He didn’t need to say the words, they were already banging around the inside of Henry’s skull.

The Harpooners high-fived him in turn. And then there was Pella, still a student and yet seeming so much older than him. She gave him an almost-awkward, lopsided smile, and then a hug that lasted. “You can always go to grad school,” she said, and winked.

Henry breathed out and smiled back.

Down on the field, the game went as smoothly as he could have hoped, nerves dissipating as his focus narrowed to each ball as it came off the bat or away from the pitcher’s hand. He batted well, made the right calls, directed the other fielders who looked to him for guidance. The step from Division III college ball to MLB was a huge one, but he had somehow made it without stumbling, without anyone realizing that in fact he wasn’t meant to be there at all, that he was just a skinny kid from Lankton who should’ve been a small town metalworker without even a college degree…

He scooped up the ball within a second of it hitting the turf, and threw it out to first base where Phillips was waiting. The timing was perfect, the conditions predictable, the batter just not fast enough to be safe… The ball curved past Phillips’ glove and thudded down to the grass. Henry blinked at it, at the complete impossibility of it. And yet there it was, a little ball in the grass, very much there and not in Phillips’ glove.

At first base, Phillips looked over at him: raised eyebrows, not even a frown. No broken bones. No right fielder unconscious in the dugout. Just one error. It happened to everyone. It even happened to Aparicio Rodriguez.

Henry tugged his cap down lower, dropped into a waiting crouch, and held his breath as the pitcher tossed the ball from hand to hand. Up in the crowd, his family and friends were laughing and cheering… or waiting anxiously, wondering if this would be the time he cracked, the error from which he would never recover.

 _Will Henry be okay?_ he asked himself.

The pitcher coughed and wheeled his arm. The next batter was built like a bull and would likely hit like one. So he’d made one bad throw… or Phillips hadn’t made a good catch. He didn’t have to be perfect, at least not all the time, but…

The ball sailed through the air, came off the bat cleanly. Henry’s hand lifted without conscious thought, his feet pushing off from the damp turf.

 _Yes_ , he thought.

Henry was going to be just fine.


End file.
